Big Issues (and, Yes, Amour) Hit Rendez-Vous With French Cinema

No more stale pastries and flat Champagne. The persistence of sentimental nonsense that has tainted the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema series since its inception more than two decades ago is gone; in its place are hardheaded films on difficult subjects. Not an ooh-la-la is to be heard in this year’s series, which begins Thursday at the Walter Reade Theater.

Leading the list of issues is the plight of immigrants, the subject of Jacques Audiard’s “Dheepan,” the closing-night film and winner ofthe Palme d’Or at Cannes. Three Sri Lankan refugees with fake passports land in a crime-ridden housing project on the fringe of Paris. Their exodus from a war-torn country is no journey of deliverance to a promised land but an exchange of one hell for another.

Even the opening-night selection, traditionally a lightweight, star-driven crowd-pleaser, has a ghoulish edge. In Guillaume Nicloux’s “Valley of Love,” Isabelle Huppert (as chilly as ever) and Gérard Depardieu play a long-separated couple who reunite in Death Valley after the suicide of the gay son they had neglected. Following his written instructions, they visit various sites in hopes of meeting his ghost for a farewell encounter. The supernatural hocus-pocus amounts to very little, but at least you get to see two great stars, however mismatched, being themselves in an all-too-symbolic setting.

That said, the 2016 Rendez-Vous, presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance, is by the far the best in the many years I have been writing about it. The real meat can be found in movies like Philippe Faucon’s “Fatima,” which beat out “Dheepan” for the best-film César (the French equivalent of the Oscars). In a heart-rending performance, Soria Zeroual plays the middle-aged divorcée of the title, an Algerian mother of two who works 16 hours a day as a housecleaner in Lyon to pay for their education.

The oldest, the 18-year-old Nesrine (Zita Hanrot, who won a César for best new actress), is a struggling medical student, but her 15-year-old sister, Souad (Kenza-Noah Aïche), is an insolent brat. She despises Fatima, who begins to crumble under the stress of her labors and to question her decision to sacrifice everything for her children. Not the least of her challenges is dealing with the hostility of other Arab women in the neighborhood.

An equally tough-minded perspective on immigration is presented in Danielle Arbid’s “Parisienne,” set in the mid-’90s. The central figure is a young Lebanese woman (Manal Issa), who flees the house of her sexually predatory uncle to pursue her university education and live by her wits with no fixed abode. Among the many obstacles she faces are the strict bureaucratic rules when the time comes to renew her residency permit.

A French film series that doesn’t explore variations of love and sex is almost unimaginable, and this year’s Rendez-Vous has the usual quota of juicy warmblooded attractions. Maïwenn’s “My King” is the story of a heedless, 10-year amour fou that deservedly won Emmanuelle Bercot the best actress award in Cannes. Her character knowingly risks her mental stability to pursue her stormy passion for Georgio (Vincent Cassel), a feckless charmer who can’t live with or without her. Ms. Bercot fearlessly takes her character to the brink of madness. The story flashes back and forth from a rehabilitation center, where she is recovering from a ski accident, to track the ups and downs of their volatile relationship.

Catherine Corsini’s “Summertime,” set in 1971, is the story of a sizzling lesbian affair between Delphine (Izïa Higelin), a farm girl from the Limoges area, and a Parisian feminist (Cécile de France) who abruptly leaves her boyfriend to live with Delphine in the homophobic rural community. The movie is as good as Todd Haynes’s “Carol,” which is saying a lot, and its love scenes are considerably more frank. “Summertime” will inevitably also be compared with Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2013 film, “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which filtered lesbian desire through a prurient male gaze.

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Isabelle Huppert in “Valley of Love,” part of Rendez-Vous With French Cinema.CreditStrand Releasing

In erotic frankness without judgment or gratuitous titillation, “Much Loved,” the French-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s group portrait of prostitutes in Marrakesh, pushes boundaries without asking us for sympathy. It begins with a protracted sequence at a drug-fueled party in which they cavort with wealthy visiting Saudis. The movie was banned in Morocco, because the government said it undermined the country’s values and image. But the individual portraits each have a distinctive personality. The movie zeros in on the hypocrisy of strait-laced parents who condemn their daughters’ profession but welcome the money it provides.

In “Standing Tall,” Catherine Deneuve gives one of her warmest, most emotionally shaded performances as a juvenile court judge. For 10 years, her character watches over the case of Malony (Rod Paradot), an uncontrollable delinquent who, just when he appears to be making progress, flies into blind, antisocial rages. Ms. Deneuve’s firm but benevolent judge anchors the film, while Mr. Paradot’s performance explodes off the screen.

Like many of the rest of the films in the series, Julie Delpy’s “Lolo,” which she wrote, directed and stars in, can be recommended albeit with qualifications. The characters are voluble and articulate. But the son in this mother-son comedy is treated as a zany prankster rather than the malevolent sociopath that he really is.

Two of the entries, released in France before the Paris terrorist attacks in November, seem to foreshadow that horror. Emmanuel Finkiel’s “A Decent Man,” the story of a bitter, unemployed working-class father (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who is mugged and wrongly accuses a young Arab, is a squirm-inducing portrait of a Gallic Everyman curdled by frustration and self-loathing into a social menace.

In the most prescient film, Alice Winocour’s “Disorder,” Matthias Schoenaerts plays a soldier newly returned from Afghanistan who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He takes a job guarding the wife (Diane Kruger) of a Lebanese financier and arms dealer in a high-security mansion. Every noise on the ticking soundtrack signals danger, and Mr. Schoenaerts’s face is a looming storm cloud. “Disorder” evokes a paranoid world on perpetual alert for imminent catastrophe. Sure enough, trouble arrives.

Correction:

A Critic’s Notebook article on March 3 about the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema series in Manhattan misidentified the nationality of the title character in “Fatima,” a film in the series. She is Algerian, not Moroccan.

­Rendez-Vous With French Cinema runs through March 13 at the Walter Reade Theater; filmlinc­.org.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Big Issues (and, Yes, Love) Hit Recent French Cinema. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe